Something new to fear: nanoplastics
Someone was talking to me about this just the other day, as though we don’t already have enough to worry about:
So this must be the health scare du jour.
I actually rarely drink water from those little bottles. But I do use Sodastream, which is made of a different type of plastic that isn’t single-use. On their site they sort of talk around the issue but never come right out and say how their bottles stack up. But this scientist seems to be saying that Sodastream is better in terms of nanoplastics.
What I hate is how much plastic refuse one creates just by buying things: packaging of little electronics, food takeout, or even in the grocery store. I’m old enough to know it didn’t used to be like that. But it sure is now.
When I was young, we had a relative who distributed soda in glass bottles that really were recycled. We’d get cases of them delivered, and store them in the basement. It seemed like a great system.
A long while ago I was in Poland and my wife bought some soda water in traditional glass bottles. She tripped when we entered our building, and a bottle exploded. When the lights came on we saw a steady drip–drip–drip, which was blood dripping from her throat where the broken glass had hit her. Actually, drip–drip–drip isn’t really so bad (better than gush—gush–gush) and a few stiches fixed her up.
The world is full of dangers, and it is easy to exaggerate some and ignore others. It won’t be long before the environmentalists realize that there is no such thing as single-use plastic bags, and that the real home of single use plastic is medicine. After they take away our fossil fuels and our cars and our planes and our meat and our wood-burning pizza ovens, they will come after our dialysis. I really mean this. They are already coming after our anesthetics: https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj.o1301
Remember when plastic bags were necessary because they would save all the forests paper bags required?
Pretty sure it was around the same time we’all were gonna die from the Big Freeze.
Or, was it same time eggs caused high cholesterol and were gonna give us all heart attacks?
Single use bags— Spare me; nothing is single-use. Around here we use the grocery ones as wastepaper basket liners and for kitchen trash, and for collected dog poop. Yogurt cups, etc are excellent for small parts in my shop and for mixing small batches of finishes (no clean-up, when you’re done you toss them). Most of our zip-top food bags are used many times before they get tossed.
I’m old enough to remember when all soft drinks came in glass bottles, with a return deposit. They were reused many times. As kids it was like finding a gold nugget to find a toss away coke bottle… return it to the store for the 3-cent deposit, which turned into 3 chunks of Bazooka bubble (with the comic).
Most medical implements are plastic and single use. Stainless steel and the autoclave is history. Yes the plastic bags was to save the trees, but now the plastic straws are out in favor of paper ones. Don’t get me started on hardware store packaging or styrofoam “doggie bag” take home containers.
The scientific paper cited in the CBS news report is “PNAS” or the “Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences.”
The National Academy of Sciences members can contribute a paper or else nominate another one. The original purpose was to facilitate timely scientific communications.
And PNAS used to do this. However, with the rise of Global Warming (TM), the Academy — whose members only may nominate distinguished scientists called to serve — has gotten downgraded on good scientific authority because standards were loosened to accommodate “important new fields” like, oh, environmental studies!
Thus, the value, prestige and authority of the NAS has been downgraded,
And therefore I put little trust in this novel report. I’m sure in the weeks ahead, we’ll hear about both confirmation of this new crisis as well as rebukes.
It’s worth recalling that for 52 years we’ve celebrated on Lenin’s birthday, Earth Day. (And yes, that was intended and no coincidence.) And every Earth Day in April comes with alarums and reminders of one horror or another from once trusted and admired “science” authorities.
Yet exactly NONE of them have come true!
Remind yourself of this fact before you put any weight on any novel alarming science story. We all need to filter out speculation dressed up as “science” — or fall prey to actual junk science.
Here in Germany, we can use glass or plastic bottles. Both are recycled, with nationwide deposit systems.
My wife, who is *quite* conscious of possible nanoparticles, had the house switch to glass almost exclusively. (We still use plastic when on the road.)
I used to lug around the heavy crates every week, we drink a lot of water. At some point, my back started acting up, and ever since, we have had a delivery of 20 crates or so every few weeks.
Which of course means that a truck specifically drives though the residential area to bring this stuff, which I used to just bring along when I went shopping. I sure hope the increase in particulate matter and exhaust fumes are worth not drinking out of plastic.
How much food would be spoiled and wasted without plastic?
Can’t see the forest for the trees.
Bodybuilder
As Thomas Sowell said, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
Gorgasal, I’m terribly sorry to learn that your home doesn’t have municipal water or a well.
They’re finding nanoplastics everywhere, not just in the water sitting in the plastic bottles. I drink a lot of Diet Coke, and greatly prefer the taste of soda in cans although it’s cheaper to buy the 2 liter bottles. I’m not sure why we don’t use (easily recyclable) cans instead of glass if we’re so concerned about plastic. Lighter than glass so less fuel is used.
How are nanoplastics different from silica sand, ash, billions of microbes, cyanide, lead, and many other things you inhale/ingest each day?
This is yet another scare tactic.
The giveaway is usually that a very easy solution is ignored to continue the scam: in this case, burning plastic returns it to carbon powder indistinguishable from wood ash or compost.
Isn’t burning stuff baaaad?
Also a scam: Since the mid 1960s we have had (and mandated) the technology to scrub ash out of smokestacks using sprays of water. The impressive photos of billowing “smoke”stacks are usually steam clouds – which evaporate quickly without residue, unlike Victorian London… unless you’re in a 3rd world country, India, or China, which still pour pollutants into the air…. mustn’t say anything bad about China, though…. another giveaway.
And improved 2-stage pyrolysis first breaks down the plastic (or paper) to yield useable fuel gases, then reduces the remaining material to carbon. Google “pyrolysis cogeneration”
This carbon can be added to soil as fertilizer, or spread in the ocean to boost fishery yields.
Most environmentalism is sentimental hooey to make us guilty for living our modern lives, and scaremongering to get us to give it up.
“The issue is never the issue – the issue is always the revolution”.
Plastophobia is generally BS anyway. Many plastics get turned into power generation fuel, among other things. The USA, for example does not contribute substantially to the loose plastics in the ocean, which is the primary cause for caterwauling, and justly so — this would be China, not even anyone else. Via their river system, they dump a truly huge mass of plastics into the South China Sea on a constant basis — a billion and a half people can do that for you.
Also, there is no issue with landfills “filling up”, though this, too, is a commonly related shout of “Wolf!!”. I have a friend, one of the smartest guys I know, who pretty much put himself through college (engineering school) by working as an intern during the summer literally supervising the building of landfills (increasing responsibilities, “duh”).
He says the claim that they are being “filled up too fast” is absolute garbage, not even worthy of wasting your time over. He makes a more evidentiary argument than I’m presenting, but my summary is the gist of the conclusion.
P.S., what Ben David, above, says. 😉
Fullmoon: And margarine was good for you!!
This stuff is all FAD SCIENCE is the problem. Once you are familiar with The Decline Effect, aka “The Reproduceability Crisis”, you start to grasp that the quality control on “Soft Sciences” is so abysmally atrocious that you really cannot seriously trust anything in that zone right now — until the whole systemic review process is totally overhauled, it’s consistently specious in results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
This is why “Climate Science” is so bad — it’s very very soft — but it’s true of many other sciences, generally biological, psychological, and social sciences, where the quality of the analysis, as well as the data collection, often leads to presumptuous results, based on “what the experimenter wants to find”.
For those of you unfamiliar, the late economist Julian Simon placed a public bet with loudmouth Paul Ehrlich over the cost of resources over 10 years.
It says a lot that, even after this, Simon struggled to find funding, but Ehrlich continued to be a merdia darling and routinely commanded 5-figure speaking fees.
Simon, unfortunately, did a Michael Crichton, and passed away unfortunately too young. Probably pissed off the wrong Powers That Be, and was taken out, is my bet… No, no evidence. It’s just interesting that the most effective and vocal voices against the Green bovine excreta always seem to die suspiciously young… *sigh*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990, as the payoff date. Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period.
So, where is the study of all the nano-particles in tap water??
There is a very good chance that the underground piping systems used to bring water into your home are over 100 years old. I will stick my neck out and predict that tap water is jam packed with all sort of nano-particle of who knows what that comes from the pipe materials, corrosion and from the chemicals and / or filtration media used to purify water.
But since plastics used in water bottles – polyethylene – comes from the refining and processing of …….drum roll, please………….hydrocarbons !!!!! well, now you know why plastic bottles have been singled out.
Just more politically motivated “science” from the woke , leftist, save-the-earth religious ideologues.
ObloodyHell on January 21, 2024 at 2:49 pm:
“… there is no issue with landfills “filling up”, …”
Concur, as somewhere I read that if you take all of the land fills in the country, they would fit within a square area 35 miles on a side (or 1225 sq mi = 1225 landfills one mile square equivalent).
Now, I find that a little suspicious, as I suspect most landfills are in isolated areas bought cheaply by county or city governments, and probably are closer to (say) 4 square miles each (or 300 landfills in the above.) But even then an area 70 by 70 mi equivalent is not very large given our 3.7 million sq mi area. [“The total area of the continental United States is roughly 3,706,269 square miles.”]
” There are 3,244 counties and county equivalents of the United States.”
Per Wiki: “By 2009, there were just 1,908 landfills nationwide [vs. 7700 in 1986]: a 75 percent decline in disposal facilities in less than 25 years.[22] However, this number is deceptive. Much of the decrease is due to consolidation of multiple landfills into a single, more efficient facility. Also technology has allowed for each acre of landfill to take 30% more waste. So during this time, the available landfill per person has increased by almost 30%.[23][24]
Having trouble finding area related data, vs. tons or #’s, etc. But 2000 landfills at 4 sq mi each = 8000 sq miles; add another 1000 landfills at 1 sq mi each to fill up 3000+ counties; and the approx. equivalent square area is 95 mi sq.
But I also did find this alarmist article summarizing a 2018 report:
https://sweepstandard.org/time-is-running-out-the-u-s-landfill-capacity-crisis/
Maybe Huxley and a query to his AI friend can find a better answer?
John Tyler:
100 year old water pipes are made of cast iron (ductile iron pipe IIRC), or steel (black iron pipe), not plastic. Or concrete (big big mains). Small potable water pipe was typically copper or steel (galvanized).
Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) began being used for potable water in the 1970s. Other plastic formulations came later, such as chlorinated polyvinyl chloride, (CPVC) polybutylene, high molecular weight polyethylene (PEX). Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) is only used for waste water, not potable water.
Re: Julian Simon
ObloodyHell:
Love the guy!
Simon, as talented as he was, dealt with severe depression for much of his adult life. He found a way out through cognitive therapy. He wrote a book about it and provides a free link:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Good_Mood/
This was a book I found useful.
@ fullmoon > “Remember when plastic bags were necessary because they would save all the forests paper bags required?”
In case you want a visual of that.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2024/01/IMG_0965.jpg
@ JohnTyler > “But since plastics used in water bottles – polyethylene – comes from the refining and processing of …….drum roll, please………….hydrocarbons !!!!! well, now you know why plastic bottles have been singled out.”
There are multitudes of memes and commentary on the interwebz about the shock that the ecowarriors aka environistas are going to suffer when they discover how much of their trendy elite lifestyle derives from fossil fuels AFTER their bans are brought to fruition.
But this is my favorite for wit and brevity.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.kZ2XYRYrDOC7Nf7pYq_wDAHaJe%26pid%3DApi%26h%3D160&f=1&ipt=000636485a18a7a76ee51c4fecd3c9bc7dc29e11f493115cd615ebb268dd8cb1&ipo=images
Some research on the wonders of oil-based products, without pretty pictures
I wonder what Chat would tell us?
https://energyskeptic.com/2021/how-will-500-million-products-made-from-oil-be-made-after-its-gone/
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/11/f68/Products%20Made%20From%20Oil%20and%20Natural%20Gas%20Infographic.pdf
https://innovativewealth.com/inflation-monitor/what-products-made-from-petroleum-outside-of-gasoline/
Here’s a picture with a few of the hundreds of items that will go bye-bye in the Left’s fossil fuel free world.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.cCq6X3f8wjC82paGgVg9ewHaGm%26pid%3DApi%26h%3D160&f=1&ipt=b64a771c33247e505ba5cb7c3fe34f07a3e8d1ba59075a65aa4421ad05591b07&ipo=images
I have become almost platic phobic, as I see the decreased life expectancy of Americans, the increase in obesity and the terrifying increse rate of cancers in young people.
Kuerigs really creep me out–super hot water through plastic??? Give me standard bleached filters any day!
In my post third from the top, I neglected to add an example of the decline in standards by the National Academy of Science which publishes PNAS, the journal that documents the story provoking of this thread.
I wanted to check and make sure this science fraud, Michael Mann, Penn State University, creator of the Hockey Stick temperature graph over 20 years ago, was a NAS member (you can only achieve this post by being nominated and voted on by its members).
And yes, indeed, this unrepentant and unreformed career fraud-meister as a climatologist was raised to and remains a member of the once admired NAS.
Despite losing his defamation case in British Columbia, Canada several years ago, his case in the US has reached the jury stage, with opening arguments made beginning just last Friday.
This podcast is covering the circus almost daily, including LA based voice-over talents speaking out the transcribed words of the litigators.
“Ep. 3, A Nobel Mann?” Is free to listen at Apple Podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/climate-change-on-trial/id1713827256
If you want to later search out this three week series, search for “Climate Change on Trial” at Apple Podcasts.
THIS IS GONNA BE FUN!
Lee:
“Plastics” are a vast assortment of materials. Some good for contact with people, foods, potable water, or evev implantation in the human body (biocompatibility). If you react to “plastics” with fear or loathing, well, you might want to consult your witch doctor.